Responses to nuclear terrorism

I’ve been hard put to scrape together a “Catching my eye” feature this morning due to a lack of, well, anything catching my eye. The left side of the blogosphere continues to be obsessed by the Plame/Wilson/Rove/Novak matter very nearly to the exclusion of all else. I guess they smell blood but I certainly don’t sense it. I’m quite content to let the law take its course and let the special prosecutor operate in his own good time.

The right side of the blogosphere has a few more subjects on its collective mind including the terrorist attacks in London, the one in Egypt, and manufacturing outrage over the press treatment of Bush Supreme Court nominee John Roberts and his family.

And there continues to be a debate about the comments of Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo’s suggestion that, in the event of a nuclear attack by a terrorist on a U. S. city, the Muslim holy places could become targets for a nuclear response. John Donovan of Argghhh! ably deals with the subject:

Put me in the I don’t agree camp. Any more than Kill Jerusalem = Kill Judaism, or Kill the Vatican = Kill the Catholic Church. Yes, I *do* understand the importance of the Hajj, as much as any non-Muslim-who-does-not-care-to-be-Muslim can. Part of the logic of that position being: “Allah would not allow such a thing!’ So, if it happened, it must mean either Mohammed got it wrong, or Allah has turned his back on the Faithful, fill-in-the-blank, etc.

[Full disclosure, and a question – based on The Chickenhawk Meme, since I’ve handled Nukes, am a certified Nuke Targeteer, etc, but am no longer serving, nor likely to be called to serve… does that make my opinion valid, or invalid? I can’t keep that straight…]

Would it demoralize a good chunk of Islam? Possibly. But the tougher elements among them would simply flex and adapt, just as the Catholic Church flexed and adapted to the Reformation, for example. The Holocaust didn’t cause Judaism to disappear – it resulted instead in Israel. I haven’t seen Fidel Castro or the government of the PRC collapse because the Soviet Union imploded… they’ve simply flexed and adapted. So too would the bulk of Muslims. Some would flex and adapt as we might like – become less annoying to us. Others… I think others would become much more annoying. But I find it interesting in reading around the blogs that people who consider themselves unshakable in their personal faith seem to think that destruction of the Kaaba would simply cause Islam to crumble into dust.

I think the “Nuke Mecca” analysis doesn’t account for the great savior of irresponsible and incompetent leaders in Muslim nations – the responsibility-relieving aspect of Inshallah, “It was God’s Will that this happen – to punish us for a lack of faith.”

I agree with this completely. I think that responding to an attack by terrorists on an American city with nuclear weapons with an attack on the Muslim holy places would, in the words of Talleyrand, not only be a crime, it would be a mistake. It would have no tactical significance and would be as likely to mobilize opposition to us as it would be to cow Muslims.

However, I have read thoughts from those on the center and on the right to the effect that the United States would not and should not repond to a terrorist attack on a U. S. city using nuclear weapons. Thomas Barnett wrote something of the sort in his book, The Pentagon’s New Map. I’ve tried to find the exact citation without success. I’ll revise this area if I locate the quote.

James Lileks echoed this idea in a recent “screed” on the subject:

It’s come to this: some say we have to destroy Islam in order to save it. Or us. Whatever. But just imagine nuking Tehran ten months after an attack, after the CIA concludes they helped with the bomb. (“Sorry about the WMD thing, but this time, you can trust us. If we’re wrong, well, we’ll all take early retirement. Seriously.”) The world would see it as cold-blooded murder. The world, for once, would be right.

This, I think, is wrong. Whether we should respond to a nuclear attack on an American city with a nuclear response is a discussion I’ll leave for another time. We will make such a response and Steve Green outlined the reasons for such a response in a recent post outlining the Jacksonian underpinnings of American foreign policy thought (a subject I’ve written on frequently). Jacksonians will demand a nuclear response. Wilsonians and Jeffersonians will maintain a horrified silence. Hamiltonians will worry which will be worse for business, responding or not responding. The political pressure on whomever the sitting president might be will be enormous. Like it or not, presidents tend to want to stay in office and, in this case, that will mean a nuclear response.

But the response shouldn’t be against Muslim holy place but against sites with both tactical and strategic significance: Tehran, possibly Damascus. We should remove Iran’s nuclear development capacity and many of those facilities are located in major Iranian cities.

Muslims will condemn the attack. European leaders will rail against us. For the short term. But we won’t lose a single dollar of trade for the action. And European leaders will secretly go to bed at night and sleep, in Churchill’s words, “the sleep of the saved and the thankful”.